A compressed 500-word summary of 'Perpetual Peace' by Immanuel Kant (1795)

Section 1

1. A truce ends a particular conflict for a short time, whereas a long-term treaty removes the grounds for future conflicts and thus produces lasting peace. Supposed treaties that are mere truces are beneath the dignity of kings.
2. States aren't property and can't be bought or sold. A state is more like a person than a thing, "a trunk with its own roots." If it could be bought, it would have no authority over people.
3. If a country is attacked by a foreign power, its citizens should volunteer to fight without pay. There should be no standing armies during peacetime, as their existence encourages war, nor mercenaries (contracted soldiers), as that employment is immoral.
4. A national credit system that borrows from other states, with a greater likelihood of bankrupting them than repaying them, encourages war and must be forbidden. States should ally themselves against any state that uses such a credit system (e.g. England).
5. No state has the right or authority to interfere with any other state's constitution or government.
6. War is, by definition, the violent striving of two states to reach agreement on a matter about which there has been no lawful ruling. During war, states should forbid the employment of tactics such as spying and assassinations, because "some confidence in the character of the enemy must remain even in the midst of war" if peace is to become possible. War of total extermination must be forbidden.

Section 2

Threat of war, if not open hostility, is the natural state of human society. Only in a civil state can neighbors agree to treat each other peacefully.

Three Definitive Articles for Perpetual Peace

1. "The Civil Constitution of Every State Should Be Republican"

All men are free, equal, and dependent on common legislation. A republican constitution requires the citizens' consent to fight in a war and pay for a war. "Republican" means that the executive branch is separated from the legislative; the constitution is more likely to be republican if the number of rulers is small, ideally monarchical. In a democracy, violent revolution is inevitable because everyone wants to be king.

2. "The Law of Nations Shall be Founded on a Federation of Free States"

Without losing their distinct identities, states should be bound by a joint constitution similar to their own.

Even warring nations pay lip service to the idea of law, because each human retains the hope of lawful behavior. A league of nations would require states to resolve disputes before a tribunal.

A treaty of peace ends one war; a league of peace ends all war. The idea that there ought to be no war can only make sense if there is a league of nations to generate and enforce the idea.

3. "The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality"

Everyone must have the right to temporarily visit any place on earth. Hostility to visitors is contrary to natural law. Universal hospitality is the only way to peace.

Immanuel Kant. Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. (1795)

This summary was written in 2005, along with a series of other 500-word summaries of philosophy books, as an exercise in brevity.

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If you'd like to learn more about my work, I've published books. Also, I write for Medium, for example, about the Jena collective during the end of Immanuel Kant's life.

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Skull by 849356 from Pixabay

Andrea Long Chu, in her essay "Authority" published for the first time in her 2025 book of the same name, explains something this way. Kant addressed a certain problem like this: When someone observes an indisputable fact about a piece of art, they’re just making a practical observation like whether it can be hung on a wall, whereas judgments about whether it’s beautiful are always disputable. Art critics’ belief that there is some standard by which to judge art is what gives them their air of authority, yet the standard (if there is any) will be forever indefinable. It makes sense to see someone as an authority if you believe their claims can be shown to be true; but if they believe something and no one can prove it, in what sense are they an authority? Kant’s debate interests, as Chu explains, prioritized aesthetics over politics, and he thought people should just obey the current political order and reserve their energy for intellectual discussions about the beautiful and good. In this way, Kant’s understanding of politics was perhaps primarily aesthetic.

Reading the quest for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement in 'The Great Gatsby'

In May 2013, American cinemas headlined a new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel "The Great Gatsby". It is a deeply American tale about the hope in love against all odds. It is not a story about peace talks. But, then, myths tend to enlarge their scope. The world runs on politics as well as on love stories, and some common threads run through them.

Originally posted to Helium Network on Aug. 6, 2013.

A love story

The story is about a man called Gatsby who, in his youth, fell in love with Daisy. “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath,” Fitzgerald wrote, “his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” Unfortunately, because of Daisy’s social class and her expectations, she was unattainable. Gatsby left her and sought his fortune. Eventually, he became fabulously wealthy, but by then, Daisy had already married someone else and settled in a mansion in a place called East Egg. 

To attempt to reunite with her, undissuaded, Gatsby deliberately purchased his own mansion in West Egg. Their houses were separated by a bay. Gatsby would often gaze across the water at the green light that marked Daisy’s home. What would it be like to return to that moment in time when he had kissed Daisy? Could things have been different? To attract Daisy’s attention – for she did not yet know that her old flame was so near – Gatsby threw parties for the entire town, but Daisy never came. Finally, he enlisted his neighbor, Nick, to host a private meeting between the two of them.

It is a breath-catching moment in the film when Gatsby and Daisy are brought together in Nick’s house while a rainstorm surges outside. They are surrounded by an impossibly rich profusion of cut flowers. But then what? What will they do? Where can they go, with a third party watching, and the whole world waiting outside the door, with the rest of their lives hanging in the balance? Where do they want to go? Can they stretch out time and stay in the moment forever? They cannot. They have limited time to make their decision together.

The audience knows that Gatsby and Daisy must declare their true interests. They must begin to hammer out a solution to their predicament. They must decide whether past wounds can be healed, missed opportunities can be regained, past wrongs can be righted, and disappointing roads can be rerouted. In these respects, they are beginning a sort of peace talk. They will have to aim to reach a swift decision.

Peace talks

Later in the summer of 2013, a rather different kind of story began to play out in real life. On July 29, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a dinner for Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams at the State Department building in Washington. It signaled the beginning of a new round of peace talks, a process that had been sidelined for three years. After the scintillating moment of the initial banquet is over – whether the participants find it uplifting or nerve-wracking – the emphasis can no longer be about the arrival in Washington. The emphasis must quickly shift to the inhabitants of east and west looking at each other and deciding whether their gulf can be bridged.

In one sense, this, too, is an American story. Of course, it is also a Middle Eastern story: the Israelis and Palestinians are the ones who already live with each other and will have to live with any new policies they agree upon. Yet, if the story were narrated by the mediator, John Kerry, it would be told from an American point of view, at once spectator and stakeholder. The future is inherently mysterious for everyone, but the mystery might look different for the direct participants and for the mediator. Different parties see different possibilities at different times. Prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace have long been a concern of American politicians. There is an American story within this saga.

“He did not know that it was already behind him,” Fitzgerald wrote. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning –“

So, love did not work out for Gatsby; he waited too long, and his life burned out too quickly. But a political solution might still be found in the Middle East. Past, present and future will all be discussed in the context of this new round of negotiations. People care in part because of their long memories, their "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Millennia are behind us, yet there is still tomorrow. There is still tomorrow especially because there are peace talks today. There is East Egg, and there is West Egg; there is everything between and beyond; and there are worldviews that are willing to accept that today’s social divisions may change. What is decided today will sail the boats into the future.

Painting by Jan Preisler (1872-1918). Preisler painted "Lovers" in 1905. © Public domain, due to the age of the artist. Wikimedia Commons.

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For states, talking to rogue militants is a difficult choice

When a person is abducted and held hostage for ransom, or when a building or entire region is threatened with destruction, it can be tempting for would-be heroes to negotiate with the terrorists and comply with their demands to ensure that their civilian targets remain unharmed. One naturally wants to "talk down" an unstable person from committing rash acts, and thereby to save the day. However, that sort of unforeseeable opportunity for heroism should be distinguished from carefully planned, long-range negotiations. When a state knows that certain people are likely to commit crimes in the future, the state may choose various approaches in its interactions with them.

This article was originally posted to Helium Network on July 9, 2006.

In the heat of the moment, saving the innocent at all costs – even by paying high ransoms, for example – may seem like the only moral thing to do. However, such altruism comes at a steep price. The payment conceded to one terrorist group may encourage others to extort similar concessions by the use of similar criminal acts. In other words, terrorists will learn that "crime pays." Saving one person's life by paying a ransom may therefore contribute to the abduction of ten more people in the future.

Furthermore, while an individual might be expected to quickly cave into the demands of a criminal, a government is expected to have sufficient military backing to stand firm in its positions even in the face of substantial pressure and threat of violence. A government that quickly retreats from a standoff with a small group of people may be perceived by other nations as weak, insecure, or incompetent. This may harm its foreign relations and future negotiations of all kinds.

A state has no need to negotiate with significantly weaker, more vulnerable terrorists – for example, lone, crazed gunmen or isolated cults. And although more threatening terrorist groups, such as organized militia, might actually rival the government's power, the government may still believe it is better off projecting an air of confidence and assuming that the militia will not call its bluff.

Refusing to talk to the enemy is a rational approach when one is certain one will win in the end. Of course, depending on the enemy's strength and influence, there is often a real possibility that the state could lose the battle, either militarily or ideologically, or at least not decisively win the battle through eradicating the enemy's presence. In that case, the state needs to consider how it can continue to thrive in a world where the enemy exists. That may involve talking to the enemy.

Image: Irish National Army soldiers sort through a post office destroyed by arson in Dublin. Image taken Nov. 5, 1922 and published in the Irish Times the next day. © No known copyright restrictions. National Library of Ireland on the Commons.

As Mitchell B. Reiss put it in Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists: "While there is no guarantee that talking to enemy states will promote a country's national interests, there is likewise no guarantee that not talking will do so. Not talking may be simply the stubborn residue of a failed policy. Some states cannot be isolated internationally, defeated militarily, or overthrown by domestic political forces. Keeping diplomatic distance from odious regimes may therefore not achieve a state's foreign policy objectives." Before Reiss wrote his book, he spoke to "elected officials, career civil servants, senior intelligence agents, military officers, and counterterrorism experts" who somehow managed to hold "two conflicting thoughts: Terrorists are evil and they may be part of the solution."

If the government knows that its population is at the mercy of a terrorist group distinctly more powerful than itself – for example, a group with multiple nuclear weapons – it may be more advantageous for the government and for the people it serves to engage in formal negotiations to deflect a major threat.

It makes a difference whether the situation is likely to repeat. This is illustrated through a well-known psychological exercise called the Prisoner's Dilemma, in which two people are put in separate rooms and given an opportunity to betray each other for possible gain. Betraying (called "defecting" within this exercise) is more likely to bring personal gain, and it has been deemed more "rational" insofar as rationality has traditionally been equated with greed that disregards obligations to others. However, if there are multiple iterations of the choice to cooperate or defect, and one does not know when these iterations will end – in other words, if the exercise is like real life, and people are in relationships of indefinite duration – it is risky to betray one's partner because the partner can easily return the injury on the next iteration. The same can apply to parties in long-term political negotiations.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed the question of how foreign policy can balance "practical" and "moral" obligations in her book The Mighty and the Almighty. The very idea of what it means for morality to be impractical or irrational is a separate, thorny question, but one that nevertheless affects political negotiations. Negotiators often feel they must balance "playing nice" or "being kind" with a set of aggressive, self-serving national goals. This is part of what makes negotiations so difficult.

Lastly, there is the simple question of how a state is certain that it is pursuing the right goals. Subjectively, people often feel it to be obvious that, if one has been victimized by terrorists, then naturally any response that happens to be desired is also morally justified and will have valuable results. But some people, including some victims of terrorism, have criticized this attitude as irrational and harmful. Nikki Stern, whose husband died in the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, wrote in Because I Say So: The Dangerous Appeal of Moral Authority that individuals and governments need to beware of the idea that they are invested with infallible moral clarity that exempts them from having to provide justification for their beliefs and demands. Being the victim of terrorism is a painful experience, but pain does not confer "any sort of grief-related moral wisdom" and "it certainly doesn't confer expertise." When one incorrectly assumes that one has wisdom or expertise, it can lead to dangerous choices. She noted that "people who believe themselves in possession of the truth tend to believe they're also in possession of the moral authority to act on it."

Stern concluded that nations set the best example of moral leadership when they "pursue truth, justice, and fairness to the best of [their] ability while remaining aware of [their] fallibility." This is a wise reminder of humility for anyone who is tasked with confronting a terrible force.

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If you'd like to learn more about my work, I've published books. Also, I write for Medium. There, readers with a paid membership don't have to worry about the paywall.